Hay Game Devs! I have a few questions for you.1) Will there be a voice chat button? becaus I type slowly.2) Since you can customise your own ships, can you choose the color of your ships?3) Do you have to unlock new gear? 'cus after playing Guns Of Icerus Online, I find having all the gear unlocked at the begining to be a better change of pace as I is more balenced and less grindy.4) Are you going to adding more maps? After all playing at the same place gets boring.5) I alredy know you wont add new game typs so soon, but will you do some sort of co-op thing, like a wave defence mode?6) And finaly. I alredy read the your thinking of making the game F2P some time after it's release. (Which I STRONGLY recemend against) If you do, will I get free in-game money equivalent to the amount real life money I payed for the game befor it made the transition from pay for the game to free to play?

Hi there Frost!1) We're currently opting for Razer Comms as our official voice chat software and we'd like to implement it in our game via an API or something. We have an official group, named GOD FACTORY, which was used extensively during the Kickstarter preview and which was used to form teams and find more players to join your match.

2) Yes you can! You get to choose a Major and Minor palette, as well as the type of sheen for both. So you could, for instance, choose a glossy blue and a metallic white, for instance. You can see what ships end up looking like on this forum thread: http://ninedotsforums.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=56&sid=0fbe46d1d35e149bf9ad7417971a764f(Note that the number of different parts and colors was limited during the preview and the appearance of ships should vary even more in the next playable build)

3) We do have a persistent leveling system. The reason for this is twofold: it can be very overwhelming to have access to all content straight from the start, and it helps to have a basic ship as a point of comparison for whenever you change your stats.

The other reason is that if you don't have to invest any energy in making a new ship, you lose a feeling of ownership over your ship. We want players to feel like "this is my ship", something they built for themselves and carefully chose all parts. It also brings some interesting exchanges, such as playing with a human until you unlock a special Machine Gun wing weapon that you could use on a Chorion to gain access to perforation damage. Without persistent leveling, this wouldn't be a possible exploration of the species and their compatibility.

We're careful not to have too little choices however, and our goal is to have new parts unlocked on a regular basis, always adding up more and more options to your arsenal.

4) We'd like to add more maps and have some elements in it shuffled randomly. For instance for one match you'd be in the middle of a shipwreck, in the next one you'd be next to a space stations, then in an asteroid field, etc.

5) For now we're focusing mostly on PvP, but what you suggest isn't out of the question either. We will carefully evaluate what we add to the game once we're there and have a better feel for what our community would enjoy.

6) To make things clear, we never said we *would* go F2P and our objective is to avoid it. However, if we find that the game would not be financially viable as a premium due to a lack of audience, going F2P might be the best way to bring in more players and give this game the chance to succeed it deserves. So this is up to the players: if they vote with their wallet and make our game successful without the F2P model, we'll be glad to stick to our guns and keep it this way. We are a small team and it doesn't take *that many* sales to be profitable for us, but we can't decide for the audience if they'll buy our game or not.

If we do make the transition from Premium to F2P, we will definitely give all our paying customers a very large wallet of virtual currency and they will keep everything they've already unlocked without having to pay a dime more.

It is worth noting that we intend to add DLC to the game though. These would be content expansions and not Pay2Win stuff. No Exp boost, no Epic Death Laser of Doom for 20 bucks, no "Boost your team's resistances for 24 hours" bs. We're players ourselves and we know how much these things suck.

Dear 9 . I appreciate you answering me qestions and you deninently have my vote for the game. However, in regards to question 3 (to me the most important) the fact that the gear has to be unlocked is...unsettling.

When I think of a prime PVP game, I think of Guns Of Icerus. In that game all the gear is available at the start, this means no player old or new has an advantage over the other. I find this to be the most important part of a PVP game. From the gameplay footage I've sceen, each piece of equipment has 4 lvls. I probobly shouldn't jump to conclusions but, is each level better then the last? 'caus that sounds unbalenced as Sh*t. If I could give you some freindly advice, don't give any plaryer the upper hand in any way shape or form.

Now that's not to say unlocking all dem good mccubbins is a bad idea, but it's CRUCIAL that it be done right. The best example I can think of would have to be Halo 4, where you use in game currency to buy the goodies you want in what ever order you want with out a level up system. This way people can build there arsinal the way they want, for the play style they want with out it being unfair. (CoD Black ops tried to do this with a lvl system AND a currency system. The result was the worst online experience I have ever had the displesure of breaking blood vesels over. Just FYI)

Remember, NEVER GIVE ONE SIDE THE UPPERHAND.

Also, if the game gets green lit (which in my opinion it probobly will. After all, the only confermed flaw I can see is the keyborde controls and that's not realy a big issue.) when would you release the game aproximetly?One more thing. I've tried to look up gameplay footage on the game with little avale. Because of this I've had to ask you guyz these questions directly. (I didn't even know there was a discussions boarde till last night LOL) could you maby uploade some game play or a Q&A vid?(Or both in one :3)

Any PVP experience is going to face some balancing issues throughout its lifecycle (*cough*chainquantumhook*cough*), but until the new system has been thoroughly tested it is difficult to say what needs to be changed. Progression may seem (or even be) grindy at times; but the added level of depth keeps players invested and gives them the time needed to learn as they go, rather than be overwhelmed all at once.

Having the four marks is an important factor in balancing weight, power, and heat to prevent taking penalties. Not every mark is a direct upgrade over the last and higher marks generally come with higher resource costs. Often a ship build will have to take several lower mark parts just to compensate for a few mark 4 parts. In no way will a ship be able to take all mark 4 parts without suffering resoruce penalties and/or poor overall stats.

Think of these unlockable ship parts as the runes and mastery of League of Legends, only with negative consequences for having too many of the higher leveled ones. Unlocking a new part doesn't necessarily mean you will be able to properly use it right away either. You may find yourself unable to sufficiently offset the resource costs until a new body, cockpit, or power core is unlocked. Additionally, there is intention to add a ranking system to keep players of similar skill and experience in the same matchmaking brackets. All of this should hopefully create balance within ships and leave only the player's skill as the deciding variable.

If you still have questions or concerns about the progression system and shop, a basic video explanation was recorded on Twitch: